The global demand for timber is increasing, with prognoses for the EU showing particularly high growth to meet renewable energy targets. However, there are limited options to meet rising timber demands within the EU, and global land competition to meet world food, energy and material needs, as well as to conserve high value nature areas, is increasing. This dissertation addresses the knowledge gap between the pressures of increased land use abroad and the underlying drivers of land use change. It argues that there is a high risk of problem shifting if EU policies to increase timber consumption are not accompanied by a monitoring system that accounts for consumption levels and provides a benchmark for sustainability.
This book is dedicated to global perspectives on sustainable forest management. It focuses on a need to move away from purely protective management of forests to innovative approaches for multiple use and management of forest resources. The book is divided into two sections; the first section, with thirteen chapters deals with the forest management aspects while the second section, with five chapters is dedicated to forest utilization. This book will fill the existing gaps in the knowledge about emerging perspectives on sustainable forest management. It will be an interesting and helpful resource to managers, specialists and students in the field of forestry and natural resources management.
Timber sourcing is shifting from extraction from natural forests to forms of cultivation that are increasingly agricultural in nature. This book takes a multidisciplinary approach to examine the socio-political, biophysical and discursive dimensions of this divergence of wood production from forests. This analysis challenges the historical integration of wood production and forest ecosystem management exemplified by the institutions of forestry with their inherent wood/forest connection. This has significant implications for how wood and forest socio-ecological systems confront change and challenge ideas about how to achieve sustainability. Historically, the institutions of stewardship forestry were founded on ideals of sustainable systems in long-term equilibrium. However, these occur within rapidly evolving social and technological contexts that constantly challenge the maintenance of any equilibrium. This creates considerable tension within wood and forest socio-ecological systems and their institutions and governance. Moving beyond adaptation to transformation, however, requires a willingness to consider post-forestry conditions, such as integration of emerging wood cultivation systems into agricultural and landscape approaches, and increasing management of extensive forest ecosystems for non-wood values in the absence of wood production. This book includes four case studies: a global modelling of shifts in wood production and three national case studies (Australia, Indonesia and New Zealand), each analysing shifts in resilience in wood and forest socio-ecological systems using a different disciplinary approach. This book will be of interest to advanced students, researchers and professionals in forestry, land use, conservation, rural studies and geography.
Policy issues relating to forestry have been the subject of much debate in recent years, and many countries and international agencies have recently, or are currently in the process, of revising their policies for forestry. Much of this debate has implied that previous policies have failed or been much less successful than had been hoped. There is a tendency to think of policy as a matter for governments, but it is now more widely appreciated that all shareholders in the forestry sector have a legitimate interest in both the policy objectives and the means that will be used to implement it. This book is mainly concerned with the process of developing policy and the subsequent implementation, than in specific content, though many of the important issues which policies must address are discussed. It is based on a review of many case studies with which the author has been personally involved over the past 40 years.
This book is a collection of papers presented at the international symposium on forest sector analysis held in Miyazaki, Japan, in 1998. It is structured with three themes: understanding global forest sector issues, discussing the contribution of modeling efforts to forest sector analysis, and discussing the role of Japanese forest policy in a global sense. The most important features are the case studies using various types of forest sector models. From a modeling perspective, changes in modeling efforts include more detail of spatial and multiple market levels, intergenerational welfare concerns, non-market valuation issues, and explicit treatment of the uncertainty inherent in both the policy process and in the biophysical systems. The reader of this book will benefit not only from presentation of forest utilization issues in different nations, but also from the interrelatedness of the theory and application of forest sector modeling.
The forestlands of the U.S. tell a fascinating story about humankind and its relationship with the land. It is a story of trial and error, of consumption and conservation, and of conflict and collaboration. But most of all, it is a story of re-growth, renewal, and abundance. Through words, statistics, and graphs, this report tells this story. Contents: Historical Trends; What and Where are America¿s Forests (AF); Who Owns AF?; Conservation of AF; Biodiversity, Wildlife, Water and Non-timber Forest Products; Recreational Use; Growth, Harvesting, and Reforestation; Carbon Sequestration; AF in a Global Context; Certification; Threats; Forest Divestiture; Wood and Paper Products; Forest Products Markets; and Econ. Importance of a Healthy Forest Industry. Illus.
"The forest products industry ranks as one of the world's most important industries; for the global economy and the environment. It represents close to 3% of the world's gross economic output. The forests upon which it depends are among the most critical ecosystems for the health of the planet and for human well-being. The size of the industry, its links to the rest of the world economy, and the importance of its resource base for environmental services make it the target of intense public scrutiny and government regulation. Understanding sustainable forestry requires understanding the evolving dynamics of the forest products industry an evolution that is increasingly making the cost of wood a smaller fraction of the final value of a forest product.Two frameworks are used here as prisms through which to view the industry. The first section describes how the major business and environmental trends sweeping the industry are transforming Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) into a major industry force. It then outlines the most critical nonenvironmental drivers that make or break all businesses within the industry, and explains how they will influence sustainability issues. The second section describes how all these forces play out within each of the three major industry segments: paper, solid wood, and engineered wood products, and maps out in which parts of the industry sustainable forestry is already a major issue, where it is not, and why.This approach makes sense given the history of SFM. Most sustainable forestry businesses have started from the forest, then tried to move forward to the market. An analysis that assesses the industry and links market conditions back to sustainableforestry supply capabilities reveals where sustainable forestry is well integrated, where it may not have much current opportunity, and where opportunity for closer end-market integration remains untapped.The forces transforming the industry include: tightening supplies, a shift in production regions, globalization, increased raw material efficiency, intensified product consistency, and heightened government regulation. Just as these forces are affected by environmental pressures, they also have environmental impacts of their own.As population growth and burgeoning economies spur the consumption of forest products, wood supplies are tightening worldwide. While no crisis is imminent, the industry is turning to new regions, especially South America and South Asia, as a source for wood. It is also gradually shifting from a supply based largely on natural forests to one that depends on plantations, many located in the southern hemisphere. Just when environmental restrictions are curtailing wood production in many northern countries, heightened demand elsewhere is causing the industry to expand into delicate ecosystems in the Southern Hemisphere. Meanwhile, the industry is becoming increasingly globalized, with raw materials sourced throughout the world to create products for equally diverse markets.Shifts in producing regions and globalization are creating new opportunities for value-added industries in the southern hemisphere. Primary and secondary processing industries will follow wood supplies for financial reasons, as timber producing nations try to capture a larger share of the production from forest products. These changes will draw significant investment to the SouthernHemisphere.Globalization brings improvements in communications, shipping, and distribution that facilitate the transfer of knowledge about state-of-the-art forest management techniques. These same developments make the emergence of an international trade in certified forest products possible. As capital travels to formerly untapped forest reserves, for example those in eastern Russia, the forces unleashed by globalization will exert even greater pressures on forests worldwide in the next twenty years.Evermore efficient raw material use and increasing prroduct standardization are also contributing to the industry's transformation. Over the past several decades, the industry has created many technological silver bullets that enable it to create more product from less wood.The industry-wide drive for standardization and consistency is moving down the value chain from final consumer products through to the forest. Instead of emphasizing efforts to use individual species such as oak and cherry, resources are now allocated to figure out how to make a vanilla feedstock such as rubber wood look and perform like oak or cherry. Eventually, this trend will lead to more investment in processing assets that can guarantee consistency, and a movement toward either tree plantations or homogenization during primary and secondary processing.Environmental forces have flexed their political and market muscles, placing the forest products industry under intensifying public scrutiny and government regulation of its environmental performance. New regulations and market initiatives are curtailing access to government controlled forest resources, and influencing the management of private forests. While a numberof international agreements designed to improve forest practices might eventually affect the industry, few now have the teeth to do so.In the past five years "certification" has emerged as a nongovernmental initiative that may further transform the way the industry manages its forests. Certified forest products are defining the market for wood products grown in an environmentally sound fashion. While the full impact of certification is still unknown, if it focuses the concerns of consumers and purchasers on the quality of the forest from which a product is harvested, and if certification is widely adopted, it could dramatically improve forest management and change markets.How the business and environmental forces affect the paper, panels, and sawnwood segments of the industry will determine, in large measure, the future of sustainable forest products. The paper industry, with its massive capital investments, huge pollution abatement costs, extreme business cycles, and susceptibility to buyer power, has long been beleaguered. The paper industry's recent shift to greater use of recycled paper demonstrates both its vulnerability to outside pressures and its ability to adapt rapidly to a new business environment.Panels and engineered wood products may be a model for the future. Products in this segment, capitalizing on rapid-fire technological advances, are among the fastest growing in the industry. From an environmental perspective, these products' ability to use a variety of woods now makes them more attractive than plywood, the once dominant panel product. On the other hand, certified panel products will be much tougher to bring to market because it is so difficult to ensure that all thewoods used in them come from sustainably managed forests.Sawnwood products draw most of the attention from the certification community. The sawnwood segment is more fragmented, less capital intensive and adds relatively less value to its products than paper or panels. Sawnwood companies in temperate regions that produce hardwood will have opportunities to sell to markets opened up by a new resistance to tropical hardwoods. The forest management practices of softwood producers, however, are under heavy scrutiny, and they will find fewer opportunities to leverage superior forest management. Although tropical countries are under enormous international pressure to improve their forest management practices, most of the internal and Pacific Rim markets they serve, so far, remain relatively uninterested in the environmental qualities of forest products. Niche opportunities, though, are available in Europe to tropical producers that can produce certified forest products.In the future, the successful forest products company will understand and embrace the forces that are transforming the industry. Environmental trends are at the leading edge of these changes, and will be instrumental in determining the industry's winners and losers. Companies that understand the role of the environment will profit by doing so: Those that underestimate the force of environmental issues will do so at their peril."
This Book Presents A Detailed Account Of Global Forest Resources And Principles Of Sustainable Development. It Will Be Useful For Researchers, Students, Professionals And Policy Makers.
Boycotting tropical timber reduces its economic value and provides an incentive to burn down forests, making them available for subsequent agricultural use or livestock farming. In contrast, a certification scheme for sustainably produced timber (tropical or non-tropical) protects the forests by raising their economic value. Examined here the impact of a certification scheme on German demand for tropical timber. A partial-equilibrium model is developed for the German tropical timber market as a whole as well as for five important submarkets representing 50% of the total demand. The results reveal that a credible certification scheme can induce a significant expansion of demand for sustainably produced tropical timber. This holds true for a scheme restricted to Germany as well as for an OECD-wide approach.
